Thomas Reid’s Expressivist Aesthetics

Rachel Zuckert

1 Introduction

In a recent article, Peter Kivy has argued that Thomas Reid ought to be recog-

nized as a forerunner to the expression theory of art of the late nineteenth and

twentieth centuries, proposed by thinkers such as Leo Tolstoy, R.G. Collingwood,

and John Dewey.1 Kivy argues that though Reid does not explicitly define “fine

art,” he recognizes the category of the fine arts, and takes expressive properties

to be distinctive, perhaps defining, characteristics of artworks. Reid certainly does

claim that successful expression is a, perhaps the, source of artistic value, not only

because it constitutes moving portrayal of human emotion (of characters, depicted

figures in paintings etc.), but also because it manifests or (in Reid’s terms) is a “sign

of”—expresses—the artist’s qualities: his emotional states (the focus of much later

expression theory), as well as his intelligence, acuity of observation, skill, greatness of

conception, and so on. Thus, Kivy argues, Reid is a pioneer in aesthetics, one of the

first to propound an expression theory of art, anticipating this important movement

by over a century (a distinction he shares with Johann Gottfried Herder).

1. (Kivy 2004); see also his earlier essay, (Kivy 1978).

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In concentrating on the philosophy of art narrowly speaking, however, Kivy does

not discuss the most striking and unusual role of expression on Reid’s view, indeed

perhaps the most striking and unusual claim in Reid’s aesthetic theory overall: his

analysis of beauty itself—or, as we might now put it, of aesthetic value itself—as

expression. In fact, it is likely that for Reid an expression theory of art just follows

from his more fundamental aesthetics of expression or (as I have called it in my

title) his “expressivist aesthetics.” For, given that his discussion of the arts occurs

in the context of a discussion of aesthetic value (beauty, sublimity, novelty), it seems

probable that Reid—like the majority of his contemporaries—understands “fine art”

as that set of artifacts intended, made, to be beautiful (or sublime), or, in a common

phrase of the period employed also by Reid, they are objects “whose end to please”

(EIP VI viii, 535). If beauty (or sublimity) is expression, then artworks—which

aim at beauty—will aim at, be valuable insofar as they achieve, expression. (Reid

propounds, then, a theory of art that is both a theory of art as expressive and as

“fine” or as intended to be beautiful.2)

This fundamental Reidian claim—that all beauty, not just artistic value, lies in

expression—is the focus of the present paper. It is a claim that is not only strik-

ing and unusual, but also puzzling and, many have thought, problematic.3 Indeed

Kivy may well restrict his attention to artistic expression precisely because of the

problematic character of Reid’s broader expressivist claim. For, difficult as it is to

understand what artistic expression is, it still seems quite plausible to think that

2. See also (Demoor 2006), which emphasizes the role of imitation, the most traditional definiensof art, in Reid’s philosophy of art.

3. See, for example, (Gracyk 1987, 478–79) and (Kivy 2003, 333–34).

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art is an expressive activity or a product thereof, that the artist aims to present

his or her emotions or attitudes towards the world and communicate them to the

audience, and that art serves these purposes more directly than do other activities

or products. It is considerably less obvious why one would wish to analyze beauty

thus. Indeed, later expression theorists often turned to expression as a value for art

that was precisely to be contrasted with beauty (or aesthetic value more generally).

It is, for one thing, not so clear who might be expressing what in many cases of

beauty, especially natural beauty; it is not obvious to many of us (as it was to Reid)

that there is an intelligence, a mind, an express-er “behind” nature. It is also not

entirely clear whether or how the phenomenology of the (experience of the) beautiful

is properly understood as expressive: as finding something to be a manifestation, a

sign, an externalization of something else. Do we not, for example (and as formal-

ists have contended), simply find a certain arrangement, structure, appearance of an

object pleasing, admirable, elegant, etc.—that is, beautiful? Does beauty not lie in

appearance—rather than in (a relation to) that which is beyond appearance?

The aim of this paper is to investigate what such an expressivist claim about

beauty might mean, and why one might—and why Reid did—hold it. The paper

will not defend this view against all objections and there are a good number, some of

which will be canvassed but is, rather, more exploratory in character. I will propose,

however, that Reid’s expressivism in aesthetics is meant (among other things) to take

account of a certain functional role of beauty in human life, in the human economy

of values, judgments and activities: that it is what one might call, following Stendhal

(and then Nietzsche, and then Nehamaa (2007)), a “promise of happiness.”

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I shall begin by presenting two central claims in Reid’s aesthetic theory—realism,

and his distinction between instinctive and rational judgments of beauty—that are

important for understanding his expressivist aesthetics. I then turn to present and

discuss Reid’s doctrine of expression proper or (in his terms) his view concerning the

nature of “original” and of “derived” beauty.

2 Reid’s Basic Claims

Reid’s aesthetic theory is presented primarily in his “Essay on Taste,” the eighth

and final essay of the Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man of 1785. Since Reid’s

lectures on the fine arts (Kivy 1973) add little to the view presented in “Essay on

Taste,” I concentrate solely on the published work. Following Addison, Reid discusses

three aesthetic qualities appreciated by taste: novelty, grandeur (or sublimity), and

beauty. With respect at least to the second and third of these qualities, Reid is a

realist. Against what he takes to be the view of Hutcheson (and others), he claims

that beauty and sublimity (or grandeur) do not lie in the eye of the beholder, but are

“real excellences” belonging to objects independently of our subjective responsiveness

to them. (I shall concentrate here on beauty, but draw from Reid’s discussion of

grandeur also, on points common to the two accounts.)

In support of this realist claim, Reid appears primarily to proffer the following

argument:

When I say VIRGIL’S Georgics is a beautiful poem . . . [m]y language,

according to the necessary rules of construction, can bear no other mean-

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ing but this, that there is something in the poem, and not in me, which I

call beauty . . . . No reason can be given why all mankind should express

themselves thus, but that they believe what they say. It is therefore con-

trary to the universal sense of mankind, expressed by their language, that

beauty is not really in the object, but is merely a feeling in the person

who is said to perceive it (EIP VIII i, 577; cf. VIII iii, 584).

Reid asserts, that is, that “all mankind” believes that beauty is in the object, is not

merely an idea or feeling “in the person,” and takes ordinary language to testify to

this belief (and to its prevalence, or even universality).

Read as an attempt to establish aesthetic realism, this argument prompts obvious

objections: Why should we believe either that language (invariably) reflects belief,

or that common, even universally shared beliefs are always true? After all, as Reid

himself notes, we speak of “sunrises” and “sunsets,” for example, though we do not

believe that the sun moves. As Reid likewise acknowledges, throughout history, and

across cultures, human beings have had many various, and often false, beliefs. He

notes too that language can encode such errors, or, more generally, mislead.4

But, I suggest, this argument may be understood somewhat differently, in concert

with Reid’s views concerning common sense (or, as he puts it in the quotation above,

“universal sense”) in general: not as an argument meant to be determinative, to

establish aesthetic realism, but rather as an argument intended to indicate where

the burden of proof in the debate concerning it lies.5 Thus, Reid continues from the

4. See, e.g., EIP I ii, 41 and 44, EIP VI viii, 527-41, especially 538, and EAP I ii, 14-17.5. See (Pouivet 2005), however, for an attempt at a much stronger reading of Reid’s “linguistic”

argument.

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above passage, “Philosophers should be very cautious in opposing the common sense

of mankind; for, when they do, they rarely miss going wrong” (EIP VIII i, 577, my

emphasis). Reid thus suggests that aesthetic realism lies in the province of common

sense, and thus (in accord with Reid’s views concerning common sense principles in

general) arguments against it may be offered, but ought to be scrutinized severely.

Reid allows, that is, that philosophers may (albeit cautiously) challenge common

sense beliefs, indeed (he writes elsewhere) are “entitled” to do so, even concerning

those beliefs that are reflected “in the structure of all languages” (EIP I i, 26). But

the considerations intended to lead us to reject the views of common sense must be

very compelling, and must provide a satisfying explanation of the “prejudice common

to mankind” that led to the formation of this (purportedly) “vulgar error” (27, cf.

EAP V ii, 278). This is, moreover, no easy task. For the beliefs of common sense

are our most fundamental beliefs, our first principles, those which we automatically,

naturally endorse, and which ground and structure our practices, other beliefs, and

modes of reasoning. More specifically, according to Reid’s characterization of the

criteria for common sense beliefs, they are (or concern propositions that are) “self-

evident” (or: are automatic, unquestioning natural beliefs, and/or ones that garner

immediate assent when proposed); “necessary in the conduct of life”; agreed upon

by all men; and foundational for all reasoning (EIP I ii, 39). As such, these beliefs

are not, indeed, amenable to proof, on Reid’s view, for there are no “more evident”

principles from which they could be derived (39). But neither does philosophical

theory-making usually amount to a strong enough consideration to overturn such

beliefs, Reid contends. Except in cases of skepticism so global as to prevent any

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making of claims whatsoever, philosophical arguments are always in fact themselves

based on one or more of such beliefs (in order to get “off the ground”). It appears,

Reid suggests then, arbitrary to privilege one such belief over others, since we do

and must believe all of them on trust. Thus it is rational, he holds, to endorse these

first principles—and, again, the burden of proof lies with those who wish to overturn

them.6

The above-quoted passage from the “Essay on Taste” can be read, I propose

then, as an (abbreviated) argument to the effect that the belief that beauty is a real

quality—aesthetic realism—is one such first principle (and thus, a forteriori, is not

meant to be a proof thereof). It is less clear in the case of aesthetic realism than in

the case of other first principles discussed by Reid (such as the belief in the existence

of the external world) that the criteria listed in the previous paragraph are satisfied

(nor does Reid devote as much effort as one might like to showing that they are).

As we have seen, Reid does argue that “all mankind” endorses aesthetic realism.

But—as Hume for example notes in his “Of the Standard of Taste”—it is not only

philosophers, misled by their abstruse theories, who hold that “beauty is in the eye

of the beholder”; this is, rather, a quite widespread opinion among the populace at

large. Nor, then, it is clear that aesthetic realism is self-evident, or in what way it

might be foundational for all reasoning.

Though Reid does not explicitly address such issues, one might suggest on his

behalf that the reality of beauty is the first, automatic, “natural” belief, that it is

most natural to think that beauty is a property of objects—as, for example, the

6. I rely here on the account given in (DeRose 1989).

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history of thinking about beauty also suggests—and that it is only after being con-

fronted by deep disagreements about beauty (or other puzzles about beauty, as will

be discussed presently) that people come to doubt this original belief, or to profess

the more relativistic, subjectivist position. Moreover, a belief in aesthetic realism

might be taken to be a basic, underlying first principle for many people’s actual

practice (despite avowals of aesthetic subjectivism)—from the attempt to possess,

protect, and preserve certain objects (which practices seem to suggest that the ob-

jects themselves are valuable) to the kinds of special treatment given to beautiful

people (i.e., as if they themselves were valuable in virtue of their beauty). A belief

that at least some objects really do have value, really are worthy of pursuit (for

example, by being beautiful) might also be “necessary in the conduct of life,” by

making possible the whole-hearted commitment to certain goods and pursuit of ends

in life as themselves, in fact, good, not merely as apparently good by virtue of pro-

jection of one’s pleasurable responses. Finally, though aesthetic realism is not (at

least obviously) foundational for all reasoning, it might be for the “science” of art

criticism: it is (arguably) on the grounds of this belief that one looks more carefully

at the object, in order to identify particular aspects or qualities of it as responsible

for that beauty. (Reid suggests that the first principles of common sense might be

foundational for certain particular sciences, not necessarily for all reasoning, at EIP

I ii, 40.) Such critical practice or, more broadly, practices of reasoning concerning

beauty—practices to which Reid himself draws attention, as will be discussed further

below—also might provide a way to account for (and to adjudicate) aesthetic dis-

agreements without recourse to aesthetic subjectivism: some are right, see the true

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beauty of the object properly, and others do not.7 There is, in sum, some reason to

consider aesthetic realism a common sense principle and perhaps one could say that

Reid is gesturing at such reasons in the “linguistic argument” passage quoted above.

Reid’s case for aesthetic realism in his essay on taste as a whole (not just in that

passage) comprises, I suggest finally, precisely the sort of vindication of aesthetic

realism one would expect for a common sense belief (on his view). That is, as I

have been suggesting, Reid takes it that aesthetic realism is a “baseline” or default

position. It may not, therefore, be directly proven, but may be vindicated by showing

that the opposing (philosophical) position, exemplified again mostly by Hutcheson,

cannot meet its higher burden of proof. And so Reid in fact argues in much of the

“Essay on Taste.” In particular, Reid in effect identifies two considerations that

would purport to show that beauty does not (as we are naturally inclined to believe)

lie in the object: the role of pleasure in our recognition of beauty, and the apparent

fact that there are no identifiable qualities that all beautiful objects share. And he

aims to show that these two considerations may be accommodated by a realist view,

as I shall proceed to discuss in the remainder of this section, and in the next.8

Thus, first: the role of pleasure in our recognition of beauty seems to suggest

that beauty is not in objects, but rather in our subjective responses to them. For

pleasure is, of course, not a characteristic of the object, but a sensation “in us.”

The subjective character of pleasure (and hence of our “idea” of beauty)—as Hume

makes clearer than Hutcheson—appears to be one of the central ideas underlying the

7. See Rebecca Copenhaver’s essay in this volume on Reid’s conception of improved and/orsuperior aesthetic perception.

8. I return to the issue of aesthetic disagreement or variation in taste further below.

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Hutchesonian view that beauty is similar to secondary qualities, or (as Reid quotes

Hutcheson) is “an idea raised in us” and not “any quality supposed to be in the

object . . . without relation to any mind which perceives it.”9

Against this view, Reid deploys his much-discussed analysis of secondary quali-

ties. Just as “red” refers both to our sensation and to some quality in the object

(which causes our sensation, and which may not resemble the qualitative redness we

sense), so too, Reid argues, does “beauty” refer both to the pleasure we receive from

a beautiful object and to some quality in the object responsible for that pleasure

(which need not resemble our pleasure). Thus, Reid writes:

When a beautiful object is before us, we may distinguish the agreeable

emotion it produces in us, from the quality of the object which causes

that emotion. When I hear an air in music that pleases me, I say, it is

fine, it is excellent. This excellence is not in me; it is in the music. But

the pleasure it gives is not in the music; it is in me. Perhaps I cannot say

what it is in the tune that pleases my ear, as I cannot say what it is in

a sapid body that pleases my palate; but there is a quality in the sapid

body which pleases my palate, and I call it a delicious taste; and there

is a quality in the tune that pleases my taste, and I call it a fine or an

excellent air (EIP VIII i, 573–74; cf. VIII iv, 594–95).

Or, as Reid also puts this point, and again on parallel with his account of perception,

when we find an object beautiful, we not only feel pleasure (a sensation), but also

9. EIP VIII iv, 593, quoting I.i.9 of Hutcheson’s Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beautyand Virtue.

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judge that the object has some quality responsible for this pleasure, a judgment that

may be true or false (595).

So far, however, Reid’s view may not seem fundamentally different from Hutche-

son’s, and his criticism of Hutcheson may seem, correspondingly, somewhat unfair.10

For, though Hutcheson does state (as Reid quotes) that beauty is an idea in us, and

does not use the language of judgment, he of course holds that there is (to use Reid’s

language) a “quality in the object” that “pleases” or “causes that emotion,” namely,

uniformity amidst variety. Thus, it might not be a major revision of Hutcheson’s

view to say that by “beauty,” we mean that quality of objects (whatever it might

be, e.g., uniformity amidst variety) that causes our sensation of pleasure or idea of

beauty.

Reid’s attack on the view of “modern philosophers” (notably Hutcheson) goes

further, however. They are wrong, Reid contends, to think that “the worth and

value we put upon things is only a sensation in our minds [viz., pleasure], and not

anything inherent in the object” (EIP VIII iii, 582–83, my emphasis). Rather, Reid

contends, “[i]n objects that please the taste, we always judge that there is some

real excellence, some superiority to those that do not please” (EIP VIII i, 578).

Or, more strongly, “we put a value on [objects we judge to be beautiful] because

they are intrinsically valuable and excellent” (EIP VIII iii, 582, my emphasis). “It

depends no doubt upon our constitution,” Reid sums up, “whether we do, or do not

perceive excellence where it really is: But the object has its excellence from its own

constitution, and not from ours” (584). Hence (as in these passages) Reid identifies

10. For example at EIP VIII i, 574. On this point, see (Kivy 2003, 69–71).

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the qualities of the object appreciated by (good or correct) taste as excellences. When

we find something beautiful, on Reid’s view, it is not just that something in objects

causes pleasure in us—as Hutcheson too claims—nor just that we judge that there

is some such something—as Hutcheson might also agree—but that the object is in

some way good, worthy of being approved and we judge it to be so. (In this way,

judgments of beauty are in fact significantly different from judgments that an object

is red, though Reid does not quite acknowledge this: in both cases, we judge that the

object has some property, independently of how it might appear to us or affect us,

and thus both judgments are subject to norms of correctness, of truth or falsity. In

the case of beauty, and not of red, however, the property we attribute to the object

is itself an evaluative or normative property.11)

Moreover, and relatedly, though Reid often characterizes the excellence of the

objects as the “cause” of aesthetic pleasure—just as some quality in the object causes

the sensation of red in us—the relationship of objective or real quality (excellence)

to pleasure on Reid’s account should not, I suggest, be understood primarily as

causal. The objective quality in the object (or our recognition thereof) may cause

our pleasure, indeed, but, more importantly, its value justifies that pleasure. (Or: we

claim that there is some excellence in the object, and if the object is thus excellent,

this makes our judgment true, and would justify our pleasure). The emotions with

which we respond to an object may, Reid claims, be “just” or (alternatively) “in no

degree justified,” (EIP VIII iii, 586) according to whether they reflect the true worth

of an object or not. Or, as Reid writes more extensively:

11. For further discussion of the (dis)analogy between beauty and secondary qualities, see (Nauck-hoff 1994).

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Our moral and rational powers justly claim dominion over the whole man.

Even taste is not exempted from their authority; it must be subject to

that authority in every case wherein we pretend to reason or dispute

about matters of taste; it is the voice of reason that our love or our

admiration ought to be proportioned to the merit of the object. When it

is not grounded on real worth, it must be the effect of constitution, or of

some habit or causal association. A fond mother may see a beauty in her

darling child, or a fond author in his work, to which the rest of the world

are blind. In such cases, the affection is pre-engaged, and, as it were,

bribes the judgment, to make the object worthy of that affection. For

the mind cannot be easy in putting a value upon an object beyond what it

conceives to be due. When affection is not carried away by some natural

or acquired bias, it naturally is and ought to be led by the judgment (EIP

VIII iv, 614, my emphasis).

Reid makes clear that our positive emotional responses of taste—our “love,” “ad-

miration,” or pleasure in response to the beautiful—and our claims that the object

is valuable (“putting a value upon an object”) are (or ought to be) justified by the

“merit” or “real worth” of the object. Such a justificatory relationship is contrasted

here, moreover, not only with any case in which pleasure is taken to endow the ob-

ject with value, but also, precisely, with cases of “causal association,” in which our

response is simply caused by the object.

It may seem that this demand for justification of the responses of taste is imposed

on taste from outside: it is “our moral and rational powers” that “claim dominion”

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over taste, demanding that our “love . . . ought to be proportioned to the [object’s]

merit.” But, I would argue, taste is in fact liable to this sort of rational scrutiny

on Reid’s view because it already involves judgment, i.e., it consists not only in

having emotional responses (as caused by objects), but in making evaluative claims

about the objects of those responses that are true or false, and that (if true) render

such emotional responses “just.” As Kant will do five years later in the Critique of

the Power of Judgment (though to a slightly different conclusion), Reid draws the

reader’s attention to disputes concerning taste to support this claim. As he later

argues more extensively concerning moral sentiments (in the EAP), such practices

(of dispute or, as we might put it, of reason-giving) make no sense if objects simply

cause pleasure or do not and are valuable or not, depending on whether they do cause

such pleasure. For all such causal relations are simply a fact of the matter, true of

some subjects, false of others, none of whose responses are, then, subject to (or

differences between them resolvable by) disputes about reasons. Such practices seem

to presuppose, rather, that our pleasure “ought to be proportioned” to the merit of

the object, and that we are judging, rightly or wrongly, in ways that can be justified

or disputed, that the object has such merit (EAP V vii, 349–50). Reid’s claim, then,

that the question of justification arises only because of the “dominion” of rationality

means only, I suggest, that one aims to be right in making judgments of taste, not to

make them arbitrarily or willy-nilly, but rather as subject to justification, correction,

or improvement. (As will be discussed shortly, however, one kind of taste on Reid’s

view—the rational “sense of taste”—is more fully characterized by this reason-giving

character than the other, the “instinctive” judgments of taste.)

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In sum: these two Reidian points—that (we judge that) the beautiful object has

real excellence, and that the judgment of taste (and the pleasure associated with

it) is justified if the object is truly excellent—do constitute real differences between

Reid’s and Hutcheson’s views. For Hutcheson does seem to deny that our pleasure

is justified by the fact that objects have some quality (such as uniformity amidst

variety). Rather, it is the opposite: we approve of uniformity amidst variety because

it is pleasing. For Hutcheson, pleasure (of a certain kind, naturally had by all human

beings in “ordinary” circumstances, untainted by distorting customs or associations)

establishes that objects are beautiful—and then it is an inductive project to discover

which qualities these pleasure-causing objects might have in common. If some objects

cause such pleasure, but prove not to be characterized by uniformity amidst variety,

we would need to formulate a new inductive hypothesis about which other qualities of

objects might cause such pleasure. The pleasures themselves cannot be “corrected,”

or justified, for they just are the standards for what will count as beautiful.12

For Reid, by contrast, the pleasure of taste is more like a promise or (in his

terms) a sign: it signals to us that the object is good in some way. The pleasures

of “internal” (aesthetic) taste are, Reid suggests, like the pleasures of “external”

(gustatory) taste: just as the pleasures of external taste indicate to us which foods

are fit for human consumption, and lead us to seek them out, so too the pleasures

of internal taste signal, and lead us to affirm, the goodness of the object. Because

they are, or function as, such signs, however, our pleasures may also be “corrected,”

shown to be false indicators—if the object is found not to have the promised good

12. At least according to a Reidian interpretation (which is not unreasonable) of Hutcheson’s view.See, however, (Shelley 2007), for a cogent defense of a cognitivist reading of Hutcheson

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qualities. Thus, Reid writes,

A man, who, by any disorder in his mental powers, or by bad habits, has

contracted a relish for what has no real excellence, or what is deformed

and defective, has a depraved taste, like one who finds a more agreeable

relish in ashes or cinders than in the most wholesome food (EIP VIII i,

575–76).

It is not, in other words, that the person of “depraved” taste appreciates a different or

unusual sort of beauty (as a Hutchesonian account might have it, even if Hutcheson

himself attempts to resist this conclusion), but rather that he (as it were) suffers from

faulty signs that misdirect, promises of worth that are not fulfilled—just as he who

loves ashes and cinders is not seeking out food in fact good for him. This (I contend)

is the sense in which aesthetic qualities are supposed to be entirely independent of

us on Reid’s account: they render an object good independently of our pleasurable

response.

This contention (that beautiful objects are good—“excellent”—independently of

our pleasurable responses) may be confirmed, Reid suggests, by recognizing the pos-

sibility, indeed the fact, of what he calls “rational” taste. (I now briefly turn, that is,

to the other of Reid’s basic concepts I shall discuss, namely the distinction between

instinctive and rational taste.) When we find something beautiful, it may be that we

simply find an object pleasing without being able to articulate why, without “being

able to specify any perfection which justifies our judgment” (EIP VIII iv, 596). We

find such an object beautiful instinctively. In other cases, however, we can articulate

reasons for our pleasure, excellences that lie in the object (598). Such excellences

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might include, to use some of Reid’s examples: an artifact’s design for a purpose; the

orderly rational laws that govern the stars and planets; the role of the healthy flower

in the plant’s flourishing, and so on. In these cases, the judge not only feels pleasure,

and not only judges, in general, that the object has some excellence—as in the case

of instinctive judgments of beauty—but also can articulate what that excellence is.

With respect to these judgments, then, appreciators who disagree may engage in

explicit dispute, concerning whether the asserted reasons for beauty do indeed hold

of the object, are indeed sources of excellence, and so forth. At least in some cases,

moreover, our instinctive appreciation of beauty—our pleasure in the object, taken

as a sign of its unknown excellence—can be transformed into rational appreciation

or (in the terms I have been using) can be known to be justified through rational

understanding of the object’s excellence, as we come to learn more about the object,

see its virtues more clearly, and so forth (598).

3 Reid’s Doctrine of Original and Derived Beauty

(Expression)

Reid’s suggestion that aesthetic pleasure might be a corrigible “sign” of goodness

allows him to accommodate, within his realist view, the aspect of aesthetic appreci-

ation that perhaps most inclines to a subjectivist view: the centrality of pleasure in

taste. But Reid also attempts to address another common (though not particularly

Hutchesonian) reason for a subjectivist view, namely that we are incapable of identi-

fying some quality that all beautiful objects share, to which we are responding, and

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about which we can be right or wrong. Reid’s answer to this worry is expression.

Reid grants that there is no one quality—analogous to a certain propensity to

reflect light rays in the case of red—that renders objects beautiful. Rather, he

suggests, all beautiful objects have in common that they are excellent, though this

excellence takes different forms, or is based on different properties, in different kinds

of objects. So, for example, a snake, a marble table, and a cat may all be beautiful

because each has the excellence of its kind (on Reid’s view); for the snake and the

marble table, but not the cat, however, a high degree of smoothness will contribute

to this excellence, and thus is partially responsible for the object’s beauty.

Reid claims, however, that such excellence takes two basic forms, which he calls

“original” and “derived” beauty: “As some objects shine by their own light, and

many more by light that is borrowed or reflected; so I conceive the lustre of beauty in

some objects is inherent and original, and in many others is borrowed and reflected”

(EIP VIII iv, 599). Original beauty, Reid claims, belongs to minds, to mental per-

fections such as the moral and intellectual virtues, wisdom, kindness, etc., qualities

that are intrinsically excellent. “Derived” beauty, by contrast, belongs to material

objects, those which bear the marks, the signs, the effects of original beauty—as,

to take Reid’s favorite example, the beautiful functionality of a machine bears the

marks of design by an intelligent, i.e., originally beautiful, mind. What we find pleas-

ing, what is of objective value, is the excellence of minds or, in beautiful material

objects, their expression of it.

This claim, of course, is the focus of the present paper. But it may appear that I

have mischaracterized it in denominating Reid’s aesthetics an expressivist aesthetics.

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Derived beauty, on Reid’s view, is indeed expression. But Reid seems to think that

much beauty—in fact the most fundamental type of beauty, original beauty—lies not

in expression but rather simply in mental qualities. Thus it would appear that Reid’s

aesthetics is not completely—or even fundamentally—an expressivist aesthetics.

But this impression is not really correct. For, immediately after Reid introduces

the concept of original beauty, he writes:

But neither mind, nor any of its qualities or powers, is an immediate

object of perception to man. We are, indeed, immediately conscious of

the operations of our own mind; and every degree of perfection in them

gives the purest pleasure . . . . Other minds we perceive only through the

medium of material objects, on which their signatures are impressed. It

is through this medium that we perceive life, activity, wisdom and every

moral and intellectual quality in other beings. The signs of those qualities

are immediately perceived by the senses; by them the qualities themselves

are reflected to our understanding (EIP VIII iv, 602–3).

Reid suggests here that, apart from the exceptional case of judging one’s own mental

qualities, an appreciator is never aware of original beauty, the beauty of mental

qualities, except through their expressions. For, this passage implies, taste is not

simply like perception (for example, in combining sensation and judgment), as Reid

argues explicitly throughout the essay, but it is also dependent upon or enacted

within sense perception. Thus, because we are aware of mental qualities in sense

perception through their signs, through the “medium of material objects,” so too are

we aware of their beauty only through such signs.

19

The premise employed here—that taste is accomplished or exercised by means of

sense perception—is an assumption that Reid never explicitly states, nor, a forteriori,

defends, in his essay on taste. It might be defended as necessary to explain why or

how judgments of taste differ from other kinds of approving judgments of objects’

real excellence (a task seemingly incumbent upon Reid, though never taken up by

him explicitly). Such an argument lies beyond the scope of this paper, however. For

our purposes, it is important to note that this premise, and Reid’s conclusion from

it, mean that there is a weaker distinction between original and derived beauty than

first appears. Reid indeed continues his discussion thus:

The beauties of mind, though invisible in themselves, are perceived in

the objects of sense, on which their image is impressed.

If we consider, on the other hand, the qualities in sensible objects to

which we ascribe beauty, I apprehend we shall find in all of them some

relation to mind (603).

The difference between original and derived beauties appears, then, actually to be

a difference in emphasis or aspect in our experience of expressions. Original beauty

is the mental excellence “perceived in” its expression, while derived beauty is the

excellence of the expression (of the same). They are, one might say, the beauty of

the expressed, as opposed to the beauty of the expressing respectively.

Thus Reid does hold that (nearly) all beauty lies in expression. Hence too Reid’s

claims (in other works) that the capacity of taste is based on the human ability

to read what he calls “a natural language language common to all mankind,” i.e.,

to interpret facial, gestural or vocal expressions as signs of mental passions and

20

dispositions (IHM V iii, 59–61; EAP III vi, 141). For (nearly) all perception of

beauty—whether original or derived—comprises “reading” that “natural language,”

interpreting material signs as expressive of mind. Our appreciation of such expression

must, moreover, be understood as a “natural”—automatic, unlearned (though also

improvable)—capacity as well: as Reid notes, an infant both perceives his nurse to

be kind, and appreciates that kindness instinctively, without any explicit or rational

recognition thereof (EAP III ii, 79).

If it is in fact the case that all taste is appreciation of expressive objects as

expressive, one might wonder why Reid makes the distinction between original and

derived beauty; I will return to this question below. Before doing so, however,

one must first investigate Reid’s grounds for endorsing his expressivist aesthetics in

general.

4 Why an Expressivist Aesthetics?

Reid’s reasons for this view—or his strategies for defending it—are of two kinds:

experiential or inductive, and theoretical. I discuss them in turn.

A. Experiential/Inductive

First, and most obviously in the text, Reid surveys the objects actually found beau-

tiful, suggesting that analysis of them will show that in each case, we find the object

beautiful as expressive. Unsurprisingly, human beauty and art (both fine art and ar-

tifacts) figure largely in this survey. As already noted, the beauty of a well-designed

21

machine (or any sort of artifact), resting on its manifest fitness for purpose, is one of

Reid’s key examples. Reid suggests also about music (the fine art he discusses most

extensively) that not only melody, but also harmony, are beautiful because expres-

sive (of emotions, and of human concord respectively) (EIP VIII iv, 604–05). Reid

is clearly also struck by the transformative, beautifying effect of the expression of

(positive) emotions and dispositions in human faces, gestures or motions, suggesting

that expression is both necessary and sufficient for human beauty:

There is a great difference in the same face, according as the person is

in a better or worse humor, or more or less lively. The best complexion,

the finest features, and the exactest shape, without anything of the mind

expressed in the face, is insipid and unmoving. The finest eyes in the

world, with an excess of malice or rage in them, will grow shocking. The

passions can give beauty without the assistance of colour or form, and

take it away when these have united most strongly to give it (EIP VIII

iv, 611).

These are, of course, the easier cases. As Reid recognizes, there are many non-

human and non-human-made beauties in the animate and inanimate world. Even

here, in discussing human beauty, Reid mentions color and form, “fine features,” and

so on—not obviously expressive properties—as possible sources of beauty.

In his treatment of animal and plant beauties, Reid makes clear that he has a

generous view of the nature of the mind or—perhaps better—the soul, a conception

that is clearly influenced by ancient philosophy. “Mind” includes, for Reid, animal

instincts, appetites, even animal “sagacity” and so on, as well as “life,” and so too

22

vigorous, flourishing life, or activity and health (see, for example, the passage quoted

above from 602–03). Thus all manifestations of health, as well as animal and plant

forms that promote and manifest successful activity, count for Reid as expressions of

“mental” excellences. (Contra Kivy, then, and in contradistinction to later expres-

sion theorists, Reid’s expressivism does not focus particularly on emotions as that

which is expressed. Reid’s view is, however, also in one way narrower than Kivy sug-

gests, for uniqueness, to which Kivy extensively refers as a valued characteristic of

artists/artistic expression, is not among the expressed mental qualities appreciated

as beautiful, on Reid’s view; it alone would constitute mere novelty, not a positive

excellence (Kivy 2004, 284–86).13)

Reid employs his expansive conception of the mental/the expressed to interpret

many further cases or possible sources of beauty as expressive, beyond the more

obvious cases of human bodily expression or expression in artifacts. As evolutionary

psychologists today also contend, Reid claims, for example, that proportion and

symmetry in human bodies, the color of complexion and so on—that is, beauty-

making but not obviously expressive qualities—are in fact expressive: they are signs

of fitness or health in humans, as in other animals, and are found beautiful as such,

even if we are not explicitly or rationally aware of that which they express (609–10).

(Presumably such qualities are to be taken as similarly expressive in other contexts

as well, e.g., as connoting solidity in buildings.) For Reid, such manifestations of

purpose are also, of course, signs of God’s “wise contrivance,” as is the fitness of the

inorganic world for organic life. Reid asserts too, against Hutcheson, that regularity,

13. For other critical remarks concerning Kivy’s claim, see (Gallie 1998, 174–80).

23

or uniformity amidst variety—order and lawfulness in the inorganic and organic

worlds—is appreciated as a sign of design.

In the course of his empirical survey of beauties, Reid thus manages to incorpo-

rate far more of those objects commonly taken to be beautiful (or properties taken

to be responsible for beauty) within his expressive view than might initially have

seemed possible, through his expansive conception of “mind” and his proposed inter-

pretations of apparently non-expressive properties as, in fact, expressive. There are

limits, however, to the success of this defense of expressivism. As one might expect,

the (re)interpretation of apparently non-expressive properties is plausible to different

degrees in different cases; Reid’s attempts to interpret a fine voice (in music) and

sunsets as beautiful because expressive are particularly unpersuasive, for example.

(See 604, 606; in both cases, one is tempted to reply to Reid that these objects are

expressive or “signs” of perfection in virtue of their beauty, not vice versa.) Even in

the cases of more plausible proposals, the expressivist interpretation may seem some-

what arbitrary: it might identify the source of the object’s beauty, but it could also

be capturing merely one beauty-relevant aspect of the object, or simply be provid-

ing an explanation where none is necessary (as, e.g., Hutcheson might argue about

uniformity amidst variety: it is not pleasing because it is a sign of design, but it

is simply, as such, pleasing). For these reasons, I suggest, Reid’s empirical defense

of his expressivism must be seen as supplemented, indeed as both constrained and

motivated, by more strictly theoretical grounds, to which I now turn.

24

B. Theoretical

Reid’s aesthetic expressivism is not just meant to account for our experiences of

beauty, but is also supported on theoretical grounds, namely as entailed by his aes-

thetic realism. Reid’s realism may in fact be part of his motivation for engaging in

his (relatively detailed) inductive survey of beautiful objects itself: realism would

seem to dictate close attention to the character of objects actually found beautiful.

But it is also an independent ground for his expressivism, and as such constrains his

inductive procedure (as will be discussed in a moment). As noted above, on Reid’s

view, the source of an object’s beauty is its real excellence, its value independent of

pleasure taken in perceiving it. Now we may add that, on Reid’s view, matter as

such, seen merely as “an inert, extended, divisible, and moveable substance” (EIP

VIII iii, 590, cf. VIII iv, 603)—thus form, shape, movement, and we might add color

here too, it would seem—does not seem to have any inherent excellence. By contrast,

the moral and intellectual virtues, life, and health are, Reid contends, intrinsically,

inherently good (EIP VIII iii, 585). (And matter and mind exhaust the kinds of

things that there are.)

In typically realist fashion, Reid seems to appeal simply to intuition in support of

his contention concerning the inherent value of mental virtues and the lack thereof of

the merely material. He does, however, attempt to “pump” such intuition through a

thought experiment (which also is meant to make clear that emotions can be “just”

or not):

Let us suppose, if possible, a being so constituted, as to have a high re-

spect for ignorance, weakness and folly: to venerate cowardice, malice,

25

and envy, and to hold the contrary qualities in contempt. . . . Could we

believe such a constitution to be anything else than madness and delir-

ium? (EIP VIII iii, 584)

Reid asks us to judge this imagined entity, and proposes that we will simply not

be willing to allow that its responses track some other sort of value than ours do,

but rather will insist that these responses are a sign of insanity, of failure to rec-

ognize that which is, simply, inherently good (here: wisdom, courage, benevolence).

Though Reid does not propose the correlative thought experiment concerning matter

merely as such (not seen as expressive), he would presumably suggest that we would

not find a being who preferred (say) dull to bright colors, or slight asymmetry to

pure symmetry—or who was just indifferent concerning brightness or dullness, sym-

metry or asymmetry—similarly insane. For (Reid would contend) we recognize that

these properties, in themselves, have no comparable intrinsic excellence, and may be

unproblematically subject to personal perferences.

What I am calling Reid’s theoretical argument for his expressivism runs, then,

as follows: If aesthetic judgments mean to identify real excellences, and if mental

qualities are the only qualities that have or ground such real excellence, then aes-

thetic judgments—if they are correct, justified—must judge objects positively on the

grounds of such qualities. And, again, such mental qualities are perceptible—and

thus appreciable by taste—only through their effects or ”signatures” in material ob-

jects. Correspondingly, insofar as they are (seen as) effects or manifestations of such

mental excellences, otherwise meaningless or valueless material qualities—including

apparently “purely formal” properties such as uniformity amidst variety—attain

26

meaning and value. Therefore: objects are beautiful in virtue of their expression

of mental excellences.

To be clear: in support of this position, Reid is in effect asking his reader to

engage in a somewhat complex act of philosophical analysis and imagination. The

reader must, that is, on the one hand imagine “merely” or purely material qualities—

arrangement, form, color, etc.—as entirely shorn of any expressive meaning, as en-

tirely devoid of relation to mind; and she is to conclude, on the ground of such a

thought experiment, that such qualities are, in and by themselves, indifferent, not of

intrinsic value. She is then, however, also asked to recognize that we do (she does)

actually appreciate those very qualities (or ones like them), but that when they are

thus appreciated, such qualities are not taken purely as material, but rather are

taken as a sign of mental qualities. Thus, for example, uniformity amidst variety

by itself is merely an arrangement of color or shape, with no inherent value, but

as a manifestation of intelligence (as a sign of design), it has meaning, is connected

to that which is inherently valuable. (This Reidian anti-formalist contention may

also be given some intuitive plausibility by reflecting on the transformation of aes-

thetic sensibilities, with respect precisely to uniformity amidst variety, wrought by

the progress of the industrial revolution: symmetry and other sorts of order have, ar-

guably, been transformed—for us, in aesthetic appreciation—from signs of skill and

design on the part of the human maker that produce delight and admiration, to signs

of machine-made uniformity that produce indifference, boredom or even alienation.)

Reid’s theoretical consideration thus motivates his interpretation of merely formal

qualities as expressive in his survey of beauties: the expressive connection to true

27

value explains and justifies our attribution of value to such properties (or objects

that have them) in aesthetic judgments. It also constrains his treatment of beauties

in his inductive survey, or (more strongly) dictates whether objects taken to be

beautiful (on an empirical survey) will “count” as beauties at all. As I have been

discussing, Reid holds that there is much commonly recognized beauty in the world

that supports his expressivist claim, and he proposes, as we have just seen, that some

apparently non-expressive beauties in fact are expressive. But he also recognizes that

some apparent pleasures in beauty—in colors, for example—do not seem amenable to

an expressivist analysis. In line with what I am calling his theoretical consideration,

however, Reid concludes not that his expressivism ought to be corrected by such

counterexamples, but rather that (for example) “nothing . . . can be called beauty in

the color of the [human] species, but what expresses perfect health and liveliness and

in the fair sex softness and delicacy” (EIP VIII iv, 610, my emphasis). Thus, again,

some colors may in fact be appreciated as beautiful inasmuch as they are expressive

(of health or liveliness etc.)—and so fit Reid’s account—even if we do not at present

know that or how they are expressive, or which excellences they express. (That is,

we appreciate them instinctively, not rationally.) But other color preferences (as

well as Reid’s own views about the “fair sex,” perhaps) are to be traced instead to

“fashion, habit, associations, and perhaps some peculiarity of constitution” (610).

They are not, that is, truly pleasures in beauty, because they are not responses to a

real excellence. So too Reid judges concerning disagreements in taste across different

cultures or historical periods: many of these disagreements do not concern beauty

proper, but rather concern that which is not truly of value, that which is admired by

28

particular people because of their parochial habits or concerns (or, of course, some

parties to the dispute may be simply wrong, as well).

(At best, such preferences for qualities that cannot be traced back to [expression

of] intrinsic mental excellence may count as instinctive judgments of beauty in a

secondary or merely “courtesy” sense [though it is not explicitly identified as such

by Reid]. That is, the central type of instinctive judgments of beauty on Reid’s

view must be those that claim that the object has real value, but without identifying

what that real excellence is. Reid also, however, suggests that there are instinctive

judgments of beauty in which the object has no real excellence; rather, it is simply

[objectively, really] good that the appreciator takes pleasure in such an objects.

Thus, for example, Reid suggests that children’s cognitive development is promoted

by their love of “gaudy” ornaments and other such things—which attract children’s

attention, and prompt them to exert their cognitive powers (EIP VIII iv, 613). It

is doubtful, however, whether Reid is entitled to term such objects/judgments cases

of beauty or judgments of taste, proper. For they fit Hutcheson’s account of beauty

rather than Reid’s: the objects in such cases have no real excellence, but are good

insofar as they are pleasing, which pleasure is, in turn, good for us, just as Hutcheson

argues that the pleasure in uniformity amidst variety is good because it promotes our

search after knowledge. A discussion of the role of such judgments in Reid’s account

must await another occasion, however.)

To return to and sum up the main thread of argument here: Reid’s commitment

to realism grounds his aesthetic expressivism—and constrains the significance of the

empirical evidence we think we have concerning what is beautiful, for some of it will

29

prove—subject to theoretically-governed scrutiny—not to count as beautiful at all.

Here we may see the sophisticated structure of Reid’s “common sense” methodology:

common sense is, all things being equal, to be endorsed concerning first principles,

but this endorsement may well be consistent with, or even, as in this case, corrective

of many particular commonly made—and in this sense “common sense”—judgments.

5 The Promise of Happiness

Reid thus does provide reasons for his expressivist views. But his two lines of argu-

ment also re-raise the questions raised above in the introduction. Reid’s expansive

conception of what may be expressed (to include life, health, and activity) does help

to make aesthetic expressivism a more plausible doctrine concerning natural beauty.

Reid’s frequent reference to “God’s wise contrivance” to account for natural beauty

may nonetheless give pause: if God does not exist, and so God’s mental qualities are

not expressed in the forms of nature, does this entail that all natural beauties are

not, in fact, real beauties? (This I shall refer to, in brief, as the “God-problem.”)

Second, and more broadly: is Reid’s account accurate to beauty as it presents itself

in our experience? do we, really, find objects beautiful as in some sense pointing

beyond themselves, as signs or manifestations of something else? Or: despite Reid’s

eloquent treatment particularly of human beauty, is this not a theory that (mostly)

sacrifices the experience of beauty, beauty as it in fact manifests itself, to (in a way)

external theoretical considerations? To these questions posed above, a third question

concerning Reid’s doctrine of expression, which may have arisen along the way, could

30

also be added: why must the “real excellence” of the beautiful object ultimately be

a different excellence (not beauty)? Why must aesthetic value be reduced to another

form of value?

The answer to these questions, I suggest—in a somewhat speculative and ex-

ploratory vein—lies in Reid’s understanding of beauty (and/or taste) as fundamen-

tally “progressive,” to use his terms from the conclusion to the “Essay on Taste”

(EIP VIII iv, 613–14). Here Reid means in part and most immediately that taste

makes claim to rightness, and so may be, indeed often is, corrected and improved

over the course of one’s life. But progressiveness actually pervades Reid’s account of

beauty, of individual experiences of beauty, as well. The idea—roughly put—is this:

Beauty is that which points beyond itself; its value is (to be) intrinsically suggestive

of (further) value. Correspondingly, the experience of beauty is one that prompts

us to progress, to find out more about the object, to get to its “heart,” to seek its

ultimate, most fundamental value.

Such progressiveness is, for example, suggested in Reid’s discussions of instinctive

and rational judgments of beauty and their relation. As noted above, Reid suggests

that instinctive appreciation may be transformed into rational appreciation: we may

come to see why it is, how it is precisely, that the object is excellent, as we instinc-

tively judge it to be.14 But Reid also suggests that instinctive appreciation “draws

our attention,” (EAP II iii, 62) prompts us to seek to understand the object better:

The beauties of the field, of the forest, and of the flower-garden, strike a

child long before he can reason. He is delighted with what he sees, but

14. See Rebecca Copenhaver’s essay in this volume for a more extensive treatment of the progres-sion from instinctive to rational perceptions/judgments of taste.

31

he knows not why. This is instinct, but it is not confined to childhood; it

continues through all the stages of life. It leads the Florist, the Botanist,

the Philosopher, to examine and compare the objects which Nature, by

this powerful instinct, recommends to his attention (EIP VIII iv, 607, my

emphasis).

Such further investigation is, Reid claims as well, rewarding, providing greater, more

extensive beauties for appreciation—the “expert Anatomist,” for example, “sees

numberless beautiful contrivances in the structure of the human body, which are

unknown to the ignorant” (EIP VIII iv, 595).

Our appreciation of beauty is, thus, both perceptual (i.e., an “intellectual power”),

but also a prompt to action, to exerting ourselves. Hence, perhaps, Reid’s placement

of the “Essay on Taste” at the end of his Essays on the Intellectual Powers—as a

transition to his subsequent Essays on the Active Powers, as reflecting the transi-

tional, prompting, activity-oriented nature of (our appreciation of) beauty. In the

context of our exercise of our active powers proper, moreover, the appreciation of

beauty can also function as a prompt or promise, in this case towards moral activity.

On Reid’s view, as on Kant’s, morality proper consists in doing the right thing

because it is right and thus requires rational recognition of the morally good, and

comprises explicitly reason-guided behavior. However, Reid also—unlike Kant—

holds that affective, even instinctive responses such as natural benevolence are (as

it were) proto-moral, worthy of praise and encouragement, as they are signs that we

are naturally disposed towards virtue, and natural compensations for failures of full

virtue: human beings are fallible and not fully intelligent beings; benevolent feelings

32

and instincts “supply defects” (i.e., make up for defects) of reasoning in leading us

to act in morally good ways, even when reason fails us or is ineffective alone (EAP

III ii, 82).

Our pleasure in beauty, in turn, has a moralizing effect, in encouraging us to

develop such proto-moral sentiments and dispositions:

The emotion produced by beautiful objects is gay and pleasant. It sweet-

ens and humanizes the temper, is friendly to every benevolent affection,

and tends to allay sullen and angry passions. It enlivens the mind, and

disposes it to other agreeable emotions, such as those of love, hope, and

joy (EIP VIII iv, 592).

Our liking for beauty in persons, indeed, itself is benevolence toward those persons

(593)—literally wishing those people well—which is a central component and spring

of virtue on Reid’s view (as on that of many of his contemporaries).

It is not simply these softening effects on our feelings that render beauty an

impetus to morality, however, but also (as it were) the “content” of beauty, namely

that beauty in human beings is the manifestation (expression) of goodness, including

“benevolent affection.” Thus, in a lovely passage, Reid writes:

It is owing . . . to the great force of pleasingness which attends all the

kinder passions, that lovers not only seem, but really are, more beautiful

to each other than they are to the rest of the world; because, when they

are together, the most pleasing passions are more frequently exerted in

each of their faces than they are in either before the rest of the world

(EIP VIII iv, 610–11).

33

More broadly—and not just in the case of lovers—our natural attraction to the

outward expression of benevolent affections (our taste for beauty, instinctive as well

as rational) encourages us to seek out the company of people of good moral character,

and even to aspire to being thus moral ourselves. For our appreciation for these moral

qualities attracts us, Reid claims, to proper and right behavior (EAP III vii, 185);

the pleasure we take in the manifestations of virtue in others promises us an even

greater pleasure in our own virtue (EAP III vii, 183).

Thus, beauty instinctively appreciated—taken to have an unknown excellence—

may be understood to be a somewhat mysterious, beckoning promise, one that leads

the appreciator to pursuit of the object. Reid’s expressivism itself amounts, I suggest

moreover, to an incorporation of this promissory character of beauty into the very

metaphysics of beauty—and thus for the rational, as well as the instinctive, sense

of beauty. For if beauty is expression a beauty of the expressing material object,

as “signature” of the expressed—then beauty, by its very nature, points beyond

itself. That which is expressed, the mental excellence, is always both in some sense

present, manifested, in the object, and beyond it as well, for it is an ability to

produce further such signatures, not exhausted only in this very one.15 The reasons

for beauty that we recognize in rational taste (on Reid’s view) also, likewise, point

beyond the perception of this very object: its order here points us towards a prior,

ordering principle or power, its signs of health, life, activity, or virtue to those higher,

more broadly active principles. Expressivism means, in other words, that even in

rational appreciation of beauty there is always something elusive, something beyond

15. See Laurent Jaffro’s essay in this volume on Reid’s metaphysics of power, specifically of thepower of the soul as manifested in its effects

34

this experience of this object, that grounds its value.

This promissory, elusive character to beauty might too—to return to another

question left unanswered above—be a reason why Reid identifies original beauty

as belonging to mental excellences, as inherent but “invisible” excellence, as the

ultimate, real beauty, even though it is ever inaccessible. For the distinction between

original and derived beauty opens a gap between the present object and that to which

it points us, that which it is expressing—or, perhaps better, captures the way in

which the expression is beautiful precisely as an expression of something (valuable,

promised) beyond it. Moreover, if beauty simply is such a pointing-beyond, an

elusive promise, to some ultimate excellence, this excellence will have to be another

kind of excellence. By its own lights, as it were, beauty will not be the highest value,

for its value is to point beyond itself to ultimate, to-be-sought value.

This suggestion may seem to accentuate the God-problem, however. For if beauty

is the promise of an original, but at least partly inaccessible beauty, a value beyond

itself, then absent God, it seems that natural beauties will, by and large, be false

promises, expressions in fact of nothing. (It should be noted that if God does exist,

then even atheists’ judgments of natural beauty would, on Reid’s view, be justified—

albeit as “instinctive” judgments; on a Reidian account, it matters only that there

really is the requisite sort of excellence in the object, not that the judge recognizes

the excellence explicitly or accurately. This problem arises for Reid, then, only if

God does not in fact exist.)

Though Reid of course does not consider the atheistic possibility, and himself

asserts (against Hutcheson, for example) that natural order and purposiveness always

35

are in fact effects of design (and thus expressive of God’s agency), it would seem that,

were he to consider the atheistic possibility, the dismissal of natural beauty would

not be his conclusion. For he writes about human beauty:

It cannot indeed be denied, that the expression of a fine countenance may

be unnaturally disjoined from the amiable qualities which it naturally

expresses: But we presume the contrary, till we have clear evidence; and

even then, we pay homage to the expression, as we do to the throne when

it happens to be unworthily filled (EIP VIII iv, 613).

Reid also claims, similarly, that we appreciate the signs of moral excellence in fic-

tional characters, precisely because ordinarily, in reality, they are signs of moral

excellence—even if, in this case, they are not signs of any actually existing excellence

(EAP III vii, 183).

It seems that this approach might apply to the case of natural beauty (with-

out God) as well. Human beings are inclined to read formal order and fitness for

purpose as expressions of well-meaning intelligence—and, in many cases, they are

expressions thereof (they might be “natural signs” in Reid’s terms). Such signs in

nature may thus receive warranted “homage” even if they are not in fact, in this

case, veridical signs. They might, in other words, constitute cases of “derivative”

beauty proper: they are beautiful solely as “expressing,” without actually standing

for, being produced by, a relevant “expressed” (in the terms introduced above); if

rightly appreciated, they are appreciated as dependent on, derivative from, the ac-

tual cases in which such expressions do express the relevant “expressed” (original

beauty). In identifying derivative beauty as a type of beauty, Reid does suggest,

36

however, that such appreciation is legitimate, such value is true value (even if a

somewhat attenuated form thereof).

Appreciation of such signs could still have, moreover, the progressive, indicative

character of beauty on Reid’s account. For our understanding of the natural order can

always be broadened and deepened, the experience of natural beauty could always

point beyond itself, promise further discoveries, of further complexity and order—

prompt us, in Reid’s words, to discover more of “the structure of [works of Nature],

of their mutual relations, and of the laws by which they are governed,” and thus find

“more delightful marks of art, wisdom and goodness” (EIP VIII iv, 595)—even if

there may be no person who made those marks.

Thus, to conclude: I suggest that Reid’s expressivism is meant to capture a

significant aspect of the phenomenology of the beautiful, namely, its prompting,

beckoning, elusive character, its role as an enticement or promise, its function—

celebrated by Plato (and then Nehamas), as well as Reid—as an inducement to love.

Indeed, I am almost tempted to fold Reid’s commitment to realism itself into the

attempt to capture this phenomenology: the experience of beauty is of a value outside

of us, beyond that experience—and thus it cannot be reduced to the pleasures I take

now in experiencing this object.

On the other hand, this view also may seem to undermine a robust aesthetic

realism, in that it reduces the value of beauty, renders it merely instrumental, a

mere step along the way to the true values. Strictly speaking, such a result would

still amount to realism, so long as the instrumental value of beauty is independent of

our affective response (in terms of the characterization of realism suggested above).

37

And in one sense, such an interpretation of Reid’s view seems accurate: for Reid,

beauty is the expression of (other) real excellences and thus is no self-standing or

ultimate value. Yet precisely as a promissory, transitional phenomenon, as one that

prompts, indeed in a way metaphysically incarnates progressiveness, beauty may

also, on Reid’s view, be understood in fact as a central, perhaps paradigmatic value

and experience in human life. For, Reid writes:

We can perhaps conceive of a being so made, that his happiness consists

in a continuance of the same unvaried sensations or feelings, without any

active exertion on his part. Whether this be possible or not, it is evident

that man is not such a being; his good consists in the vigorous exertion of

his active and intellectual powers . . . ; he is made for action and progress,

and cannot be happy without it (EIP VIII ii, 580).

Beauty as progressive, as a pointing beyond, and thus as a prompt to “vigorous

exertion,” is, then, indeed a promise of happiness—and, as Reid suggests here, human

happiness in part consists, somewhat paradoxically, in the receipt and the pursuit of

such promises.16

16. I am grateful to the editors and to Les Harris for comments, and to audiences at the BritishSociety for Aesthetics Annual Conference and the Enlightenment Aesthetics and Beyond conference(both in Edinburgh, Scotland, 2011) for interesting discussions, which have helped me to improvethis paper. All mistakes are, of course, my own.

38

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